MENAKHEM OGULNIK

MENAKHEM OGULNIK (1891-1932?)

Born in Pinsk, Poland, he was a literary researcher.  Received a Jewish and general education, and graduated from dentistry school in Warsaw.  He practiced as a dentist in Pinsk.  In 1916 he left Pinsk for Zhelekhov (Żelechów) where he was active among Jewish working youth and the Bund.  He was also one of the founders of the Jewish school system in Zhelekhov.  At the end of 1919, he returned to Pinsk; during the Russo-Polish war when the Bolsheviks occupied Pinsk, Ogulnik settled in Minsk where he lived until 1932.  He worked there for the Commissariat for Education.  In the late 1920s, he worked in a department of the Jewish section of the Byelorussian Academy of Sciences.  He began to write for Sotsialistishe yugnt-shtime (Socialist voice of youth) (Warsaw, 1919-1920) in which he published a series of articles regarding Jewish literature and general cultural issues.  He was accused in 1932 of “Trotskyist propaganda” and arrested. According to certain sources, he was executed that same year.

Source: Yikher-bukh fun der Zhelekhover yidisher kehile (Memorial book of the Zhelekhov Jewish community) (Chicago, 1954), p. 102.

[Additional information from: Chaim Beider, Leksikon fun yidishe shrayber in ratn-farband (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers in the Soviet Union), ed. Boris Sandler and Gennady Estraikh (New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, Inc., 2011), pp. 12-13.]